[Distutils] pywin32 egg?

[Mark Hammond]

> Ah.  Okay, first, pywin32 isn't registered on PyPI, so you need a -f
> link to find the files:
>
>     easy_install -f
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=78018 pywin32
>
> This is easily fixed by adding a PyPI listing with the above URL
> registered as the "Download URL".

Cool - done!

>
> easy_install successfully installs the package, but in order to do
> the registry and copying stuff, the postinstall script has to be run:
>
> $ Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "Scripts\pywin32_postinstall.py", line 5, in ?
>      pkg_resources.run_script('pywin32==210',
> 'pywin32_postinstall.py')
>    File
> "c:\cygwin\home\pje\projects\setuptools-0.6\pkg_resources.py", line
> 448, in run_script
>      self.require(requires)[0].run_script(script_name, ns)
>    File
> "c:\cygwin\home\pje\projects\setuptools-0.6\pkg_resources.py", line
> 1166, in run_script
>      execfile(script_filename, namespace, namespace)
>    File
> "c:\cygwin\home\pje\chandlerstuff\chandler\release\bin\lib\sit
> e-packages\pywin32-210-py2.4-win32.egg\EGG-INFO\scripts\pywin3
> 2_postinstall.py",
> line 365, in ?
>      install()
>    File
> "c:\cygwin\home\pje\chandlerstuff\chandler\release\bin\lib\sit
> e-packages\pywin32-210-py2.4-win32.egg\EGG-INFO\scripts\pywin3
> 2_postinstall.py",
> line 155, in install
>      LoadSystemModule(lib_dir, "pywintypes")
>    File
> "c:\cygwin\home\pje\chandlerstuff\chandler\release\bin\lib\sit
> e-packages\pywin32-210-py2.4-win32.egg\EGG-INFO\scripts\pywin3
> 2_postinstall.py",
> line 94, in LoadSystemModule
>      ('.dll', 'rb', imp.C_EXTENSION))
> ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.
>
> The problem here is that lib_dir is calculated using the system
> configuration, instead of by locating where the package is actually
> installed.  I changed the install() function like this:
>
>       import timer
>       lib_dir = os.path.dirname(timer.__file__)

> Importing some other pywin32 module than 'timer' would be okay; it
> just looked like something small and unlikely to depend on anything
> else.  With this change, the install script produced this output::

hrm - normally lib_dir is pointing at site-packages - ie, the parent of
'win32', 'win32com' etc - whereas the code above would give
site-packages\win32.  That function should be fairly easy to make
egg-friendly though.

> Is there anything I can do to verify that this did in fact
> work correctly?

Simplest would be to paste the following 2 lines into a file:

set py = CreateObject("Python.Interpreter")
WScript.Echo("1+1=" & py.Eval("1+1"))

then execute:
cscript.exe //E:VBScript filename

I suspect it will work though given the output you demonstrated.
post_install.py creates a .pth file, which I suspect is redundant, or just
plain wrong, when using eggs - it might be work looking for that pywin32.pth
file and seeing what is in it.

>
> It appears that all would be needed for pywin32 to be fully
> easy_install-able would be this change to the postinstall script
> (which shouldn't affect its functionality for direct installation),
> and an entry on PyPI.  No setup script changed required -- or so it
> appears.  Anyone wishing to use the features enabled by the
> postinstall script would just need to run it with -install.

Excellent!

> One question of course is, what features do you lose if you don't run
> the postinstall?  If I hadn't run it, would I still have been able to
> use Python to access COM objects exposed by other applications, or
> would I have been unable to do COM at all?

You probably would have only lost the ability to implement COM objects -
consuming them should be fine.  You don't get the help file registered where
pythonwin can find it and don't get a bogus .pth file <wink>, but that is
about it.

Cheers,

Mark